Research Methodology in Social Sciences

First Meeting

• Research methods, what are we up to?
  • Logistics, assessments, etc.
• Lecture: Science, Theory, Knowledge, and… Black Swans

Last weeks were quite hectic at IBSU, therefore starting from the next week we'll coordinate in terms of SMART. All your books, grades, assignments will be posted there. We will be communicating through SMART as well.

Lecture

Lecture

Seminar

Literature

• Kellstedt, P.M., and G.D. Whitten. 2013. Political Science Research. (2nd ed.).

• Participation (10%)
• Research paper (20%)
• Midterm (20%)
• Presentation (10%)
• Final exam (40%)

On a piece of paper write down last TWO digits of your phone number

• Inaccurate observations
• Overgeneralization
• Selective observation
• Illogical reasoning

Ontology: a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them.

Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.

• Idiographic: relating to the study or discovery of particular scientific facts and processes, as distinct from general laws.

• Nomothetic: relating to the study or discovery of general scientific laws

• Interpretation

• Objective reality exists, it can be understood and general laws can be derived

• Comte, Durkheim, Bacon, Popper, Talcott-Parsons, Merton, Lasarsfeld…

• Phenomenalism: Only phenomena can be studied scientificaly

• Deductivism: The goal of theory is to create a hypothesis, what in turn needs to be checked

• Inductivism: Knowledge is derived through collecting facts which in turn grounds a theory

• Social and natural sciences study different things therefore have different objectives

• Social sciences study a subjective meaning of a phenomenon, not general laws

• Weber (Verstehen - understanding), Husserl, Wittgenstein, Schutz…

• Social life should be studied in an in-depth manner

• The rolse of natural environment

• The role of understanding and interpreting the phenomenon

• Interviewing

• Focus groups

• Observation

• Case study

• People give meanings to the phenomena and act according to these emanings

• Meanings form through social interaction

• Social action depends on the process of interpretation

• The meaning of things change over the process of interpretation

Blumer, 1969

• Studies the phenomenon in quantitative manner, that is how much/how many

• Decribes and unveils associations and causal relations

  • Causality vs. correlation

• Social reality can be understood through general laws which are measurable

• Opinion polls

• Randomized experiments

• Census

• Big data